THE ACTIONS AND OPERATIONAL THIN KING OF GENERALS STRATEMEYER AND PARTRIDGE DURING THE KOREAN WAR: ADJUSTING TO POLITICAL RESTRICTIONS ON AIR CAMPAIGNS Nicholas Michael Sambaluk, B.A. Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS May 2008 APPROVED: Alfred Hurley, Major Professor Geoffrey Wawro, Minor Professor Adrian Lewis, Committee Member and Chair of the Department of History Sandra L. Terrell, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Sambaluk, Nicholas Michael. The Actions and Operational Thinking of Generals Stratemeyer and Partridge during the Korean War: Adjusting to Political Restrictions of Air Campaigns. Master of Arts (History), 101 pp., references, 57. Airpower played an important supporting role in the Korean War, and as General of the Army Douglas MacArthur pursued victory in the war and President Harry S Truman’s objectives altered throughout the first year of the conflict, tension arose between the two men. One issue in these frictions was the restriction of airpower. Not only MacArthur, but also his admiring subordinate Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer commanding the Far East Air Forces, and Fifth Air Force commander Major General Earle E. Partridge opposed the restrictions which had been imposed on airmen from the outset of the conflict. Stratemeyer did so partly because of his loyalty to MacArthur, who wanted latitude in coping with the situation in the field and defeating the Communist enemy. Partridge did so because he thought they endangered his personnel and limited the effectiveness of airpower in the war. These commanders had a fundamentally different opinion from Washington regarding the likelihood of overt Soviet intervention in the war, and because they did not think the Korean War would become a world war, they were more willing than Washington to prosecute the war more aggressively. MacArthur’s conflict ended with his removal in April 1951, and Stratemeyer (who suffered a heart attack weeks afterward) continued to advocate for forceful American foreign policy in Asia during his retirement. Partridge eventually earned four stars and long after the war likewise continued to disfavor the restrictions which had been put in place. Between oral history interviews in 1974 and 1978, however, Partridge reconsidered the issue of restrictions. He expressed that the Korean War had been a considerable challenge without a wider war, implying that restrictions had perhaps been important. Copyright 2008 by Nicholas Michael Sambaluk ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 DAYS OF CRISIS.......................................................................................................... 20 FROM INCHON TO WAKE ........................................................................................... 41 CHINA REACTS ........................................................................................................... 48 BURNING BRIDGES..................................................................................................... 60 ON MACARTHUR’S “BALLTEAM”................................................................................ 69 A POST-MORTEM ON RESTRICTIONS ...................................................................... 86 CONCLUDING REMARKS ........................................................................................... 94 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 97 iii INTRODUCTION The limited war in Korea from 1950 to 1953 between the United States (US), its allied members of the United Nations (UN), and Communist North Korea and China, raised enormous questions for the political and military leaders of the United States. America was committed to containing Communist expansion during the Cold War, but there was debate about how this was to be done in a shooting war. Fighting in Korea was nonetheless considered to be a sideshow, overshadowed by continuing to secure Western Europe. In its immediate aftermath, the conflict would be viewed as having been an aberration.1 During the war, airpower provided important support to ground forces combating North Korea’s invasion of the South. Airpower nonetheless was a controversial tool, because General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (the commander of UN forces fighting in Korea) used it while attempting to win victory in the war, whereas President Harry Truman’s objectives repeatedly altered during the conflict. Although these aims intersected, they were frequently dissimilar, which caused serious tension. Since North Korea lacked a long list of strategic targets and was largely supplied by China, airpower was used mostly in interdiction and ground support roles. MacArthur confidently expected the Far East Air Forces (FEAF), commanded by Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, to contribute to a UN victory by successfully bludgeoning Communist forces and isolating the Korean battlefield from China. From the outset of the war, the United Nations imposed restrictions on its forces fighting in Korea. FEAF was prohibited from crossing into the airspace of officially 1 John Schlight, Help from Above: Air Force Close Air Support of the Army, 1946-1973 (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Project, 2003), 179. 1 neutral China; when they were intercepted by Communist fighter planes based in China, American pilots were forbidden either to pursue their enemies back across the Yalu River into Chinese airspace or to strike Communist airstrips north of the river. MacArthur, Stratemeyer, and Major General Earle E. Partridge (commander of the Fifth Air Force) each disfavored the restrictions facing UN airpower, but they did so for different reasons. MacArthur sought a victory in Korea, although Washington’s objectives altered and so did its willingness to risk a larger war. The restricted peramiters of an artificially limited war impeded MacArthur’s pursuit of victory. MacArthur intended to achieve victory with the resources at hand and with those which could be delivered to him from outside the Far East, and airpower was one important element of this force. Stratemeyer, awed by MacArthur’s charisma, was ardently loyal to him. Both MacArthur and Stratemeyer believed that it was unlikely that the Korean conflict would expand into a general war against the Soviet Union. Partridge, too, considered Soviet involvement in the war to be unlikely. Partridge likewise opposed the restrictions imposed on his airmen, since he thought they endangered his personnel and limited the effectiveness of airpower in the war. Weeks before the UN forces were pushed back by Chinese “volunteers,” MacArthur directed that the main bridges connecting Sinuiju to Antung, China be destroyed, and that the attacking aircraft not violate the Chinese border. Washington hesitated before eventually authorizing these attacks, which were unable to destroy the bridges. MacArthur’s tensions with Washington eventually ended in his removal as commander in April 1951. Both Stratemeyer and Partridge left the war soon thereafter. 2 Stratemeyer, forced to retire by a heart attack just weeks after MacArthur’s removal, continued after the war to urge for a more assertive American posture in Asia. Partridge retired from the Air Force in 1959, and in oral history interviews with Air Force historians he continued to view restrictions as having been detrimental to the UN war effort. In another interview in 1978, his view had changed and he expressed that the Korean War had been a considerable challenge without a wider war, implying that restrictions had perhaps been important. Seventy years old in 1950, MacArthur had a long history of leading American troops in peace and war, and he would cast a long shadow over the events of the Korean War’s first year. His relief as commander of the UN forces in Korea resulted from public disagreements with President Harry S Truman and his administration over a potentially broader war. In the First World War, MacArthur’s actions had earned him the respect of his troops and inspired the then Secretary of War Newton Baker to call him the Army’s “‘greatest fighting front-line’ officer.”2 In World War II, after the American defeat in the Philippines, MacArthur had galvanized the Allied advance island-hopping from Australia to the Philippines, returning there late in 1944. His memory, personal discipline, and persuasiveness, won him what historian Clay Blair called “a profound and boundless admiration” among people who met him.3 MacArthur was a man supremely confident in his own abilities.4 2 William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1978), 86, 91. 3 Clay Blair, MacArthur (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), 2. 4 “Oral History Interview with Vernice Anderson,” Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/andrsonv.htm. (accessed 16 February 2008). 3 MacArthur’s long experience in Asia and the Pacific led him to conclude that it – not Europe – was the crucial region and that the Korean War had great influence over the fate of the continent as a whole.5 Europe was, in his opinion, “a dying system” of less importance than Asia.6 Although a truly gifted commander and an inspiring leader, MacArthur was of course like all human beings, an imperfect mortal. Blair noted that he was also: impulsive, driven by an idealistic optimism and